Rex Welshon presents an account of the properties of consciousness that are thought to be the most paradigmatic and problematic before examining recent scientific work - from neurophysiological studies of the brain to computational theories of the mind - and the philosophical problems that these accounts raise.

Explaining consciousness is one of the last great unanswered scientific and philosophical problems. Immediately known, familiar and obvious, consciousness is also baffling, opaque, and strange. How and when did we become conscious? What exactly is consciousness? A gift from God? Some kind of emergent property of our brain? A sequence of electrical sparks off electro-chemical neural activity?

An analysis and assessment of Nietzsche's metapsychology. Nietzsche is neither a dualist nor a physical reductionist about the mind. Instead, he is best interpreted as thinking that the mind is embodied and embedded in a larger natural and social environment with which it is dynamically engaged.